At Google, the Book Tour Becomes Big Business

When Tina Fey visited the Bay Area in April on her book tour for “Bossypants,” she made just two stops. She gave an interview before a sold-out crowd at the Orpheum Theater, as part of the City Arts & Lectures series. And she dropped by the Mountain View headquarters of Google.

At an Authors@Google “fireside chat,” Ms. Fey, the “30 Rock” creator and star, had a friendly conversation with Eric Schmidt, the company’s executive chairman, in front of an audience of hundreds of employees who greeted her with a standing ovation.

As Google’s reach into many aspects of media production and distribution grows ever greater, A-list authors, actors, musicians and others are taking part in the company’s six-year-old on-campus speaker series.

Lady Gaga recently shared the stage with Marissa Mayer, the company’s vice president for location and local services, as did Christy Turlington, the supermodel turned documentary director. The YouTube video of “Google Goes Gaga” has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

The unlikely spectacle of technology executives chatting up celebrities talk-show-style originated as part of Google’s effort to create a quasi-collegiate atmosphere on its campus. The events increasingly dovetail with Google’s interests in publishing, broadcasting, music distribution and other media businesses. The company is selling “Bossypants” as a Google e-book for $12.99 in its online bookstore, which it opened in December.

For authors and other creative professionals, an appearance at the Googleplex, the company’s sprawling complex of office buildings, is good business — but nonetheless conjures some mixed emotions in light of Google’s complicated relationship with content creators. The company is involved in a bitter lawsuit over its efforts to scan all of the world’s books and make them available online, and has long stood accused of unfairly profiting from work that is excerpted and indexed by the company’s search services.

“I think it’s a great thing that they’re doing this,” Chris Clarke, a natural history and environmental writer, said of the talks. “I don’t think that it clears their karma as far as trying to become the sole-source provider of all intellectual property everywhere.”

The speaker series began in 2005 with the New Yorker writers Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki as its first two guests and has since featured hundreds of authors, musicians, chefs, economists and politicians.

Google employees involved in the program say that it evolved out of employees’ interests and at their initiative.

“The program was a grass-roots effort that started when a few Googlers realized that some remarkable people were passing through the halls of the Googleplex,” said Ann Farmer, an information engineer. She is one of more than two dozen employee volunteers who organize the events, which are now held three to five times a week.

Since 2005, more than 1,000 guests have appeared. Garry Kasparov, the chess master, and Jesse Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, are among some 600 authors, mostly of nonfiction, who have participated. The list includes a number of authors who have written books about Google.

Talks now take place at Google offices around the world, with employees from 18 offices participating via videoconferencing. At larger events, employees use Google Moderator software, which fields questions from the audience, ranking the most popular ones.

In the early days of the series, the employees had to cajole speakers to attend, working personal connections, since the company did not pay an honorarium. But the program gained traction, with some talks drawing more than a million viewers on YouTube. “Let’s put it this way,” said Ms. Farmer. “The tables have turned.”

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T. J. Stiles is on the executive council of the Authors Guild, which sued Google over copyrights.Credit
Annie Tritt for The Bay Citizen

As of April 1, Cliff Redeker, 27, is the company’s official “speakers specialist.” He used to organize author visits in his spare time as a support specialist, but now his full-time job is dedicated to the speaker series.

The series has made the Googleplex an increasingly important stop for authors promoting their work in the Bay Area, as many major bookstores that featured readings have closed.

“It’s not going to replace bookstore events,” said Larry Weissman, a literary agent in Brooklyn, “but if I have an author going to San Francisco, I always want my author to stop in at Google and do an event there as well.”

The Google books lawsuit, though, combined with a broader concern that the Internet is undermining the ability of authors to get paid for their work, remains a big issue for some.

As of last October, Google Books had already scanned more than 15 million titles from more than 100 countries in 400 languages. On March 22, a federal judge threw out a settlement agreement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers. The Authors Guild had filed a class-action lawsuit against the company over copyright infringement.

Ellen Ullman, a former software engineer and author of “Close to the Machine” and “The Bug,” is a member of the Authors Guild, and she sees the speakers program as a way to “soften the blow.”

She said, from Google’s perspective, it is “ ‘Look, see? We’re not making money off of you. We’re promoting you.’ ”

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The Food Network host Alton Brown spoke at a 2009 event that was part of the Google speakers series, now six years old.Credit
Jeromy Henry for The Bay Citizen

The YouTube factor also introduces a novel dynamic.

“You know this is going to be videotaped, and there is a sense that you’re speaking for posterity,” said Christopher McDougall, the author of “Born to Run,” who has appeared at the company’s offices in Mountain View and New York. “With the Google events, it was more about talking to the camera than talking to the people.”

Typically, some employees have their laptops open during the talk, and the guest speaks not just to them but also to a future audience on YouTube.

Sherry Turkle, author of “Alone Together,” who directs the M.I.T. Initiative on Technology and Self, appeared at Google’s office in New York to promote her book. Yet she says, “We shouldn’t kid ourselves that going on YouTube to watch an author is the same thing as going to a bookstore.”

For many authors, though, it’s all good. T. J. Stiles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt,” who is on the executive council of the Authors Guild, said of the speaker series: “That’s Google focusing on authors, not just addressing books as the subject of an information aggregation operation. It’s a healthy development.”

For one Bay Area independent bookstore, the program has been a boon. Books Inc. provides books for the events held at the Mountain View campus. At most talks, employees can buy the books at a deep discount, because Google subsidizes the purchases. For some special events, the company simply buys the books and gives them away.

Having a chance to attend the talks is a great perk for Googlers that reinforces the sense that their work, and technology in general, is driving the cultural conversation in a way it never has before.

“This didn’t happen in Web 1.0,” said Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors, a division of Frank N. Magid Associates, who was a consultant to Excite in the late 1990s. “I never saw a single celebrity ever.”

kmieszkowski@baycitizen.org

A version of this article appears in print on May 13, 2011, on page A23A of the National edition with the headline: At Google, the Book Tour Becomes Big Business. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe